Designing Execution Pathways That Support Performance
A cautious working method for designing workflows, prompts, tools and support around behavioural patterns and required performance outcomes.
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Person. Friction. Performance.
Stop forcing people to fit the system. Design the path around how they perform.
Behavioural Performance is an emerging field focused on the pathway between how a person naturally operates and what they are required to achieve.
It examines where behavioural patterns support or obstruct execution, then informs the design of workflows, tools, prompts, support and interventions that improve reliable performance without removing accountability for the outcome.
Standard outcomes. Non-standard humans.
Organisations require consistent outcomes, but the people responsible for producing them differ in how they initiate, prioritise, decide, communicate, organise and sustain action.
Traditional performance systems often assume that one process, one management approach or one behavioural standard will work equally well for everyone.
Behavioural Performance examines where individual behavioural patterns and execution demands do not align, then identifies how the pathway to the required outcome can be improved.
The field
From required outcome to continuous learning.
Behavioural Performance is the study and improvement of how individual behavioural patterns affect the reliable achievement of performance outcomes.
Required Outcomes
Define the measurable results that must be achieved.
Task Demands
Identify the actions, decisions, interactions and sustained behaviours needed to produce those results.
Individual Behavioural Patterns
Understand the tendencies, strengths, constraints and preferences the person brings to execution.
Execution Friction
Identify where the person’s behavioural patterns and the demands of the task do not align.
Designed Support and Intervention
Determine what should be developed, prompted, scaffolded, simplified, resequenced, automated, delegated or coordinated.
Execution Behaviour
Observe what the person actually does within the redesigned pathway.
Performance Evidence
Measure whether execution reliability and required outcomes improve.
Continuous Learning
Use the evidence to refine the person, task or support system over time.
The sequence is a developing conceptual model. It keeps the required outcome visible while making room to adapt the pathway and learn from performance evidence.
Governing principle
Hold the outcome constant. Adapt the path.
Publications
Working ideas, made available for scrutiny.
The Institute’s first papers define the field, set out its foundations and examine the design of execution pathways. They are working papers, not peer-reviewed research.
The Foundations of Behavioural Performance
A working account of the relationship between individual behavioural patterns, task demands, execution friction and measurable outcomes.
Read paperWhat Is Behavioural Performance?
A proposed definition, scope and research agenda for an emerging applied field linking individual behavioural patterns with reliable outcomes.
Read paperInstitute and field
An independent initiative developing an emerging applied field.
The Institute of Behavioural Performance is developing Behavioural Performance as an emerging applied field. The Institute is not an accredited university, government body, membership organisation or professional regulator.
About the InstituteContact
Questions, critique and research enquiries are welcome.
The Institute is interested in careful discussion of the field, its evidence requirements and its practical boundaries.
Contact the Institute